Do I have a malicious software/site problem?

Foreword

OK I must confess to a terrible facebook addiction. Over the last coupla months haven't even looked at GW :O. Mafia Wars, FarmVille, School of Wizardry, Cafe World even Happy Aquarium FFS!! I am hooked on them all. It is a problem I must try to deal with but it leads onto what I want to ask.

MAIN QUESTION.

My desktop is connected by the LAN wire thingy to the wireless router. Lately I have noticed, the lights for the connection and the computer, are flashing like mad! Constantly. Even when nothing seems to be going on. I have taken MSN, and Xfire offline, still going. Shutdown the computer and the connection to the outside world, keeps flashing quite fast as though something is trying to get in from the outside.

Could I have a problem? Is there something I could run to identify what information is flying around? Have run spyware blaster, spybot and avg, who all seem happy.

Just worried, with all the 'friend' networking I have been doing, I may have inadvertantly clicked something bad.

On a side note the wireless function of my router seems screwed. I have reset and redone connection and now my laptop won't connect no matter what I try. Probably unrelated.

Cheers.

try using the free version of Malware Bytes.
I use it quite often and it picks up a lot of things that other scanners don't.

Sounds normal to me, are you sure that's even a problem? Only other explanation I could have is that someone is stealing the connection off your wireless router.

Nope. Not sure at all. Just feels different. Everything definitely seems to be going a lot slower. Could just be facebook problems I guess.

That was my guess.

It sounds like someone is trying to or is using your wireless, can you log in to your router and see all connections that are using it, see if there is 1 you dont recognize.

Has your system performance suffered? If your harddrive is going crazy and it takes for ever to do anything popups out of nowhere etc... then I would be worried about a virus. I would just make sure you run a updated scan. Make sure you have a active antivirus like AVG on and updated at all times.

Unplug everything from the wall to your computer and reset the router (just unplug it for 30 sec or so). If that does not work reset the router from scratch and make sure to set the protection it came. So its harder for any signal stealer to log in just in case.

TBH you probably have enough bandwidth that a leech will not slow your performance, and the flashing lights are nothing to worry about.

If you're really that worried you might be infected, do an online scan. I recommend Trend Micro HouseCall, but its really all up to you.

Flashing LEDs do not always mean there is anything malicious going on, computers on a LAN ping each other over the LAN very often to see if their still alive, mine for example flick once per second, at Internet idle.

What you need to check is your modem that connects you to the Internet, since you are on LAN follow these easy steps;

1. Disconnect everyone from the router

2. Connect each one of the computer(s) back to the LAN one by one, in other words only one PC connected at any time.
2a. All computers must be sitting at idle in other words not doing anything with the net which means;
2b. No MSN / Yahoo / ICQ etc. turn off everything that connects to the net that is running on the operating system.

If you have your Internet modem lights brighten up like a Christmas tree when you plug one of the PC(s) into the LAN you probably have an issue, and I'd recommend you clean house which in my personal terminology means you format every hard drive in the house and reinstall, it's the safest for sure reliable way of getting rid of what ever is in there.

Unless it's a hard drive root block virus in which case formatting might not do much good, so your going to need to virus scan before you level the hard drive.

You may have to leave the single PC connected to the LAN for a period of time to notice it.

If you get the lights blaring when no one is connected at all, this could just be Internet services still trying to connect to you, BitTorrent for example is chronic for this and P2P clients in general come to that, your IP can stay in the stack of peers/seeds for a very long time even when you have exited the application.

As always if in doubt, CLEAN HOUSE

Download my Anti-Malware Toolkit, get the apps for your OS and follow the PC Cleanup guide. Then post a HJT log.